Where Does Republican Foreign Policy Go From Here?

An excerpt from the blog post written by Bruce Thornton for frontpagemag.com

March 22, 2013

Recently Walter Russell Mead neatly formulated the importance of the issue for the future electoral success of Republicans: “If the struggle over the future of the GOP is seen by independents to be a battle between neocons and isolationists, the party will lose national support no matter which faction wins. Those are hard truths, but they are real: the country doesn’t want more of either George W. Bush or Ron Paul on foreign policy and until Republicans can develop a new and different vision of the way forward, they are unlikely to regain the high ground they once enjoyed on this issue.” So what should be a Republican foreign policy––isolationism, international idealism, neocon interventionism, or realism? 
Isolationism has always been an attractive option for Americans. Enjoying the protection of two oceans, in the 19^th century Thomas Jefferson could preach “entangling alliances with none” of the world’s nations. John Quincy Adams famously announced that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Later, James Monroe would say, “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.” In 1863 Secretary of State William H. Seward declined to join France’s protest against Russian intervention in Poland by evoking the U.S. “policy of non-intervention — straight, absolute, and peculiar as it may seem to other nations,” and “forbearing at all times, and in every way, from foreign alliances, intervention, and interference.”
Such a policy was in part weakened by the increasing technological and economic advances of the 19^th century that shrank the world and more closely bound nation to nation, redefining what a phrase like “seriously menaced” could mean. Our national interests now faced threats not from invading armies, but from disorder and wars abroad that disrupted an increasingly globalized trade and sparked violent competition for global resources and markets. Now internationalist idealism began to gain traction, the notion that a “federation of free states,” as Kant imagined in 1795, could “for ever terminate all wars.” International organizations, laws, and treaties would bind states together based on universal mutual interests like peace and prosperity, maintaining global order and helping backward states to progress beyond war and zero-sum competition. Given that some states would lag behind this evolution, wars would still be necessary to hasten this development by eliminating despotic illiberal regimes. However, these would be wars not of conquest or nationalist aggrandizement, but of spreading the benefits of democracy and prosperity to the whole world.

Want to read the whole article? Click on the link below.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/where-does-republican-foreign-policy-go-from-here/ 

Is isolationism becoming more popular in the United States?